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Contact Form won't generate a response

Enthusiast ,
Oct 06, 2021 Oct 06, 2021

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I created this Form by following my ISP’s instructions (iPower) for building a Form.

 

https://shelbourne-america.net//contact-form-ann4.html

 

 

Although the code seems to be OK and the Form appears to be transmitted when I hit the Send button, it does not get delivered.

 

I would like to receive an emailed notification when the form is “submitted” by a visitor but at the moment I am not getting any response after I have posted Submitting the Form; and neither is the User being directed back to the index page at

https://shelbourne-america.net

 

Would it be possible for one of you to look at the html code in the Form it and tell me what I did incorrectly?

 

iPower says that my htaccess.html is correctly configured.

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correct answers 2 Correct answers

Community Expert , Oct 06, 2021 Oct 06, 2021

Just to clarify, .htaccess is NOT an html file.  It's a server file that has nothing to do with forms or form processing.

 

If iPower told you to use this method for your contact form, think again.  THIS IS NOT SECURE.

https://www.ipower.com/help/article/form-email

 

Whichever contact form you use, it must hide sensitive data in the processing script away from prying eye robots and email harvesters.   Additionally it must stop spam, would-be hackers and sanitize form data BEFORE it ever reaches

...

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Enthusiast , Oct 07, 2021 Oct 07, 2021

Nancy:

I took your excellent advice; found PHPmailer; edited, added extra fields and a Reset button and reformatted the appearance and the text of the provided form in Dreamweaver; and finally it worked!

 

(It actually took me all day to figure it all out but that's O.K.!)

 

You can check-out the result here if you like:

https://shelbourne-america.net/phpmailer-contact-form/formpage-customised.html

 

The experts who so genrously give their time to answering our questions here truly provide a wonderful s

...

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Community Expert ,
Oct 06, 2021 Oct 06, 2021

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I am not familiar at all with iPower, but if they are providing the form script with their hosting they should be able to provide you with support on this.  Personally speaking that form is insecure and I would not recocommend using it.  I would recommend looking to a hosted solution like typeform or wufoo (the latter offers a free plan with 100 submissions per month).  Or if you are looking for more of a business solution on the backend I would recommend Hubspot.  

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Enthusiast ,
Oct 06, 2021 Oct 06, 2021

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iPower don't supply an actual script — just instructions for creating a Contact Form.

This Form is for a client and will later be istalled at their existing ISP (and will have Google code attached to it) so, at this stage, Security is not of any concern.

 

I have put this Contact Form it on my own site for now so that I can test and correct it (because I need to know that it is actually working before I let the client see it!).

 

If anyone has the time to open the file and look at the parts which pertain to the Send button and to the response links and let me know if they see something amiss in the coding, I should be most grateful.

 

I did try to ask iPower to look at my code but found that iPower do not let their employees change a customer's code .

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Community Expert ,
Oct 06, 2021 Oct 06, 2021

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Your web host's only job is to maintain web servers. They don't do web development.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

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Community Expert ,
Oct 06, 2021 Oct 06, 2021

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Just to clarify, .htaccess is NOT an html file.  It's a server file that has nothing to do with forms or form processing.

 

If iPower told you to use this method for your contact form, think again.  THIS IS NOT SECURE.

https://www.ipower.com/help/article/form-email

 

Whichever contact form you use, it must hide sensitive data in the processing script away from prying eye robots and email harvesters.   Additionally it must stop spam, would-be hackers and sanitize form data BEFORE it ever reaches your server.  And it goes without saying, it must work with your hosting plan.

 

You have a couple of options.  Hire an experienced developer to set up a contact form and script for you. When used correctly, this one is safe, secure and does what it needs to do on servers that support PHP scripts.

https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer

 

Or use a 3rd party form service like Wufoo.com or Jotform.com where form data processing is handled by their servers, not yours. 

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

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Enthusiast ,
Oct 06, 2021 Oct 06, 2021

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Thank you for answering.

 

As I mentioned previously, we are not concerned with Security at all at this stage.

 

Basically, I am merely creating a new appearance for the basic Contact Form (which the client has used happily for many years) but which was built originally in a table and a frameset.

 

 I just needed to get rid of the Frameset and Table at this stage; and then make sure that the SEND button on the Form still sends back a confirmation email when it is clicked —which it doesn't seem to do at the moment.

 

I was hoping that perhaps someone here would be able to find what might be missing in my code which is preventing the Contact Form from sending the eMail confirmation when the Send button is clicked.

 

Yes, I did use the iPower Form Builder, which Nancy displayed and, if I can make it work, it would be perfectly adequate for my purposes right now.

 

 

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Enthusiast ,
Oct 06, 2021 Oct 06, 2021

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Re: htaccess: I do know that it is not part of the page html!

 

However, if htaccess is damaged or missing, you get a 404 error when you try to send a form. That was my reason for my asking iPower to check that the htaccess in my account was not impaired. Apperently, it is undamaged.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 06, 2021 Oct 06, 2021

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@AnnShelbourne wrote:

However, if htaccess is damaged or missing, you get a 404 error when you try to send a form. That was my reason for my asking iPower to check that the htaccess in my account was not impaired. Apperently, it is undamaged.


 

htaccess controls access permissions of files and would not result in a 404 which is a not found error.

 

In further review of this script you actually have 2 forms on your page. One is a DW form with form validation, but without a processing action and the other has your processing action. You simply need the action on the form that you are processing.

 

While this should allow your form to repost, given that the ipower script is functioning since it is hosted by them, it is really not recommended nad as stated this form will fall victim to bots and that email address that the replies are going to will be found by every email harvester out there because it's all in plain text code. This is like giving your client a car and telling them the key will always be stuck in the ignition and can never be removed. While it might seem convenient, it's just asking for problems.

 

211006-formError.png

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Community Expert ,
Oct 06, 2021 Oct 06, 2021

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quote

... if I can make it work, it would be perfectly adequate for my purposes right now.

=========

Sorry to say this in all caps but NO IT WOULD NOT!!!

 

Your client's email will be fall prey to every email harvester on the planet and exploited in ways you can't imagine or worse, their email and site will be blacklisted for spamming.  Please don't go blindly down the rabbit hole of thinking that what you don't know can't hurt you.   Insecure forms are NOT safe for anyone.

 

If you need this fast, use a reliable form service and embed the provider's contact form into your HTML document with copy & paste.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

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Enthusiast ,
Oct 07, 2021 Oct 07, 2021

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Nancy:

I took your excellent advice; found PHPmailer; edited, added extra fields and a Reset button and reformatted the appearance and the text of the provided form in Dreamweaver; and finally it worked!

 

(It actually took me all day to figure it all out but that's O.K.!)

 

You can check-out the result here if you like:

https://shelbourne-america.net/phpmailer-contact-form/formpage-customised.html

 

The experts who so genrously give their time to answering our questions here truly provide a wonderful service to us all.

 

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Community Expert ,
Oct 08, 2021 Oct 08, 2021

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Congratulations!  So GLAD you took up the challenge to implement PHPMailer.  I think you made the right choice. Good job.  🙂

 

FYI:  User studies have shown that the RESET button is not required on forms.  It causes confusion among web users and can lead to more form submission failures than successes.  Therefore, we no longer use it. 

 

CAPTCHCA is recommended to stop robots from submitting forms.  Google reCAPTCHA ver 3 is recommended and free.

https://www.google.com/recaptcha/about/

 

Have a great weekend.

 

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

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Enthusiast ,
Oct 09, 2021 Oct 09, 2021

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Nancy:

Thank you so much for your very kind comments and encouragement.

 

I added the Reset button because the company (that this new website is for)  have a Reset Button on their current Contact Form but I will discuss it with them and see if they still want one. (The Reset button which I made does work to clear the filled-in Form.)

 

I was planning to use reCaptcha and was intending to ask my clients to renew their licence for Captcha because I hadn't realised that it was free!

 

What is so nice about PHPmailer is that it has its own CSS so the User can easilly re-style the basic framework, colours, fonts, the wording of the fields and the meessage which is posted back following the submission.

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